What’s Wrong with this Meme?

by

 

The above meme has been widely circulated, to the approval of people who think it’s an unanswerable response to those who question the unthinking acceptance of everything asserted by authorities and ‘experts’.  But I think it both reflects and encourages confused thinking.  Several points:

First, the pilot does not choose your destination.  You do that yourself…if you are an airline passenger, by choosing the airline and the flight, if you’re going by charter or are the airplane owner, by telling the pilot directly where you want to go.  But in neither case will you hear the pilot say, “Hey, you guys are kind of out of shape; forget Florida, we’re going to Minnesota for cross-country skiing and ice fishing.”

Second, there is nothing in politics analogous to the training and the practical and written tests required to be certified as an Airline Transport Pilot.

Third, it was identified many years ago in the aviation world that a significant number of accidents were being caused by excessive deference to (actual or perceived) authority…for example, when a First Officer (copilot) was concerned about something, but was reluctant to bring it to the attention of the Captain. The subject of ‘Crew Resource Management’, intended to address this problem, is now part of the training of people who fly aircraft with multiple crew members.  The message of CRM is the opposite of the uncritical acceptance of authority that the circulators of this meme seem to be advocating.

Fourth, although the pilot in command is responsible for and is the final authority as to the operation of that aircraft, he is also responsible for gathering information from multiple sources relevant to the safe conduct of the flight: weather information, fuel calculations, airspace restrictions, mechanical condition of the aircraft, etc.  He can’t just say well, the plane is in good shape and there’s plenty of fuel to get there, so let’s go.  Compare and contrast with the politician who in making a ‘lockdown’ decision chooses to rely only on the opinions of virologists and epidemiologists, while ignoring any information about the effects on schoolchildren and small businesses.

What else?

How to Invest Political Power

by

Roger Kimball writes:

”The usual rule is this: when Democrats win elections, they wield power. When Republicans win elections, they seek, or at least agree to, compromise.”

I will take it a step further and state the Democrats know how to leverage power, in the form of transient electoral majorities, for their long-term strategic advantage. To paraphrase Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats do not let a majority go to waste.

The great historical examples of the past 100 years are FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, each enacted after electoral landslides that conferred Democratic control over the White House, Senate, and House. Social Security and Medicare, enacted during the New Deal and Great Society, are the twin colossi of the welfare state both in terms of dollar amounts and their political invulnerability. With their existence, the Democrats gain a structural political advantage over the Republicans.

Read more

What’s the Matter with Wisconsin?

by

Curious about election result changes in one of the swing states, once Wikipedia had the final vote counts of the 2016 election (allowing a relatively simple copy to an Excel spreadsheet), I took a look at stats for Wisconsin’s two most recent presidential elections to see if I could spot signs of any trends. The exercise confirmed what I already knew about the divides in both parties – better than expected.

Read more

Formalism and Credentialism: Reversing the Trend?

by

The Trump victory represents in significant part a popular reaction against the excesses of credentialism.  I’m remembering a 2018 post at the Federalist:  Our Culture War Is Between People Who Get Results And Empty Suits With Pristine Credentials….Donald Trump declines the authority of the cultural sectors that most assertively claim it. That’s  the real conflict going on.

The post reminded me of an interchange that took place between Picasso and Matisse as the German Army advanced through France in 1940.  Matisse was shocked to learn that the enemy had already reached Reims.  “But what about our generals?” asked Matisse. “What are they doing?”

Picasso’s response: “Well, there you have it, my friend. It’s the Ecole des Beaux-Arts”…ie, formalists who had learned one set of rules and were not interested in considering deviations from same.

It was an astute remark, and it fits very well with the observations of Andre Beaufre, who before the invasion had been a young captain on the French General Staff. Although he had initially been thrilled to be placed among this elevated circle…

I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about… “I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…” Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial.

The consequences of that approach became clear in May 1940.

In addition to the formalism that Picasso hypothesized (and Beaufre observed) on the French General Staff, the civilian side of the French government was highly credential-oriented.  From the linked article:

In the first days of July, 1940, the American diplomat Robert Murphy took up his duties as the  charge d’affaires at the new U.S. embassy in Vichy, France. Coming from his recent post in Paris, he was as impressed as he expected to be by the quality of the Vichy mandarinate, a highly credentialed class of sophisticated officials who were “products of the most rigorous education and curricula in any public administration in the world.”

As the historian Robert Paxton would write, French officials were “the elite of the elite, selected through a daunting series of relentless examinations for which one prepared at expensive private schools.” In July 1940, the elite of the elite governed the remains of their broken nation, a few days after Adolf Hitler toured Paris as its conqueror.  Credentials were the key to holding public office, but not the key to success at the country’s business.

Read more